In December, 2009, the NIH announced the availability of funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for research on the use of behavioral economics approaches to enhance the uptake of comparative effectiveness research (CER) by healthcare providers (RFA-OD-10-001). Since then, additional funds have been made available for this FOA in order to enable applicants to propose trials that would be adequately powered to be more informative on closely related issues. For example, applications may propose trials that would be more informative about (1) comparing different behavioral economic approaches to find out which are more effective, (2) whether initially observed enhancements of CER uptake can be maintained, or (3) whether uptake is differentially effective for subsets of providers (e.g., those in different geographical areas or treating patients differing in socioeconomic status). Using the additional funding, proposed studies might add treatment arms, extend the follow-up period, or expand sample size to address these and other important issues.

This Notice serves to notify potential applicants of the following changes related to the Funds Available, and the Budget and Project Period:

Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. Using funds provided by the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH and AHRQ now intend to commit $24,500,000 for use under this FOA. We anticipate that 2 awards will be made for fiscal year 2010, pending the number and quality of applications and availability of funds.

Budget and Project Period. Total costs are limited to $12,250,000 throughout the grant period. The total project period for an application submitted in response to this funding opportunity may not exceed three years.

No other changes are being made to the funding opportunity announcement at this time.

Inquiries

This Notice is subject to restrictions on oral conversations during the period of time commencing with the submission of a formal application[1] by an individual or entity and ending with the award of the competitive funds. Federal officials may not participate in oral communications initiated by any person or entity concerning a pending application for a Recovery Act competitive grant or other competitive form of Federal financial assistance, whether or not the initiating party is a federally registered lobbyist. This restriction applies unless:

(i) the communication is purely logistical;
(ii) the communication is made at a widely attended gathering;
(iii) the communication is to or from a Federal agency official and another Federal Government employee;
(iv) the communication is to or from a Federal agency official and an elected chief executive of a state, local or tribal government, or to or from a Federal agency official and the Presiding Officer or Majority Leader in each chamber of a state legislature; or
(v) the communication is initiated by the Federal agency official.

We encourage your inquiries concerning this funding opportunity and welcome the opportunity to answer questions from potential applicants. Inquiries may fall into three areas: scientific/research (program), peer review, and financial or grants management issues:

Questions concerning this Notice should be referred to the Scientific/Research Contacts: